


Shine

by Margaery



Category: Vengeance Is Sworn - Francesco Hayez
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 12:11:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,377
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8890306
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margaery/pseuds/Margaery
Summary: There were no witches in Venice.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xenoglossy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/xenoglossy/gifts).



On March the twenty-second, Tommaso Contarini toppled over the rail of his balcony and plunged to his death.

For Tommaso, his death came as a surprise; his murderer’s plans had been so carefully laid that he had not the slightest inkling of danger until he was airborne. Mercifully the fall was swift, and his part in the events that unfolded thereafter came to an end.

For Tommaso’s sister Cristina, the story had only just begun.

~::~

Cristina Contarini stood by the window and looked out over the city, her hands clenched in fists at her sides. She could not remember the last time she had been this angry; perhaps she embraced the white-hot fury that burned in her veins instead of the sorrow that threatened to overmatch her.

“You’re shining,” Zilia said, her voice soft.

Zilia never raised her voice. Zilia was always soft; whether the maid singed her favorite dress, whether her sleep was interrupted by the revelries of drunken students in the streets, whether she pricked her finger and spoiled her embroidery, it none of it put Zilia out of countenance.

Cristina, born with her mother’s fire in her blood, found her restful, if occasionally frustrating.

“So I shine,” Cristina said, her words clipped and diamond-hard. “Will you report me to the witch-burners?”

“You know I will not,” Zilia said.

(Cristina Contarini had discovered that she was a sorceress on her sixteenth birthday.

Of course, since sorcery was highly illegal and thus never spoken of to gently-reared young women, she had no idea at first _what_ she had discovered. 

When Cristina had kissed Giovanna on the staircase that evening, with all the rash bravery of youth, she had been in love with her for three entire months, ever since the rosy-cheeked beauty had given her a soulful glance with her warm brown eyes. In later years Cristina would wince to read the excruciating love poetry she had written that spring in transports of delight, but at the time it had seemed the height of sophistication, and the clumsy kiss on the stair the summit of bliss.

“I am in love,” she had told Zilia, collapsing with theatrical flair into her favorite chair. 

Zilia had been a recent addition to the household. The previous month Cristina had vowed that she was done with governesses forever, expecting Tomasso to refuse the idea outright, hoping only to persuade him to allow her to rid herself of the hated Maria. Instead he had blinked owlishly at her over his breakfast, as if remembering that his half-sister existed, and vaguely suggested a companion instead. Zilia, the placid eighteen-year-old daughter of one of Tomasso’s adherents, had been installed within the week. Tomasso might have been absentminded, but he had been accustomed to having his plans rapidly carried out.

As it happened, Zilia had made a better friend than she did a chaperone. Not that anyone had ever been able to effectively chaperone Cristina, then or later.

After her announcement, Zilia had smiled at her, although her fingers had never stopped moving over her needlework. “I am happy for you,” she had said.

Tommaso had not been happy for her. Tommaso had taken one look at her and startled upright, his usual abstractedly owlish expression turning razor-sharp in a second. “You shine,” he had said, his voice unaccustomedly hoarse, and she had looked at him in confusion, unaware of her gift or her peril.

There were no witches in Venice. Magic had been outlawed by official decree; after the great burnings, there had been no witches caught for two centuries. Perhaps there were still rumors. A maiden of surpassing beauty or a politican with an inexplicable gift of leadership might find themselves the subject of jealous gossip, and their mother or wife might come under suspicious scrutiny. But it was never seriously meant; the whispers were only scurrilous. Everyone knew the witches were gone. 

When Tommaso had been twenty-eight, his widowed father had fallen in love and married again. The suddenness and social inadvisability of this courtship had impressed themselves upon Tommaso; he had heard the rumors about his new stepmother – that she was a prostitute, that she was a witch, that she was a succubus.

She had been none of those things. But nonetheless, there was magic in her blood; and it passed itself down to her daughter.

“You shine,” Tommaso had repeated, numbly, before visibly shaking himself and telling his sister what that meant.

She had sat in dumb silence, her calf-love of Giovanna passing forgotten into memory, as she had processed what he told her: that she was one of the Shining Ones.

“Never use it,” he had said. She could still remember the intensity of his gaze. “You might think it could be useful, to yourself or to me. And families have used Shining Ones in the past to further their political goals. But not you. Never you.”

She had promised.

Now Zilia told her she shone, and Cristina could feel it under her skin, burning like fire.

“What do you intend to do, milady?” 

Cristina scarce heard the question. This morning, she had been one of the most powerful women in Venice; now it was all slipping away, her erstwhile friends speaking empty words of shock and comfort while their greedy eyes turned already to the new election. By April her name would have no currency at all.

Unless she married. Women could wield power at a genteel remove, using their husbands or brothers like gloves or tools. With a man as her puppet, she might yet have a chance at retaining her power network, of finding justice for her brother. 

But Cristina did not wish to marry; she wished to tear her brother’s murderer to pieces with her bare hands. 

It had come as somewhat of a surprise to her that she had cried when they brought her the news. Tommaso, twenty-eight years her elder, had always had more of the air of an absentminded uncle than a beloved brother. It had been Tommaso’s mother who had bequeathed him her air of the abstracted saint, and Cristina’s mother who had bequeathed her the steely ferocity of the caged lion. Saints and lions could coexist only uneasily.

Tommaso had not been an unkind brother. He had not sent her to a convent, or stifled any manifestion of an independent spirit. Instead he had left her to be brought up by a succession of nannies, which she soon tyrannized into submission, and then found her a suitable companion when she declared her emancipation from the schoolroom. His benevolent disinterest had coincided with his rise to political power, and in her more charitable moments she recognized that a high-spirited younger sister was not a priority for the leader of Venice. As long as she caused no public scandal, he had been content for her to conduct her life as it pleased her. 

Now their distantly cordial coexistence had been shattered; and Cristina had cried.

She was not crying now.

“I know why Tommaso was killed,” she said to her companion Zilia, her voice as cold as marble.

“But surely he was not killed, milady,” Zilia said, her sweet face worried. “His door was locked from the inside – no villain could have pushed him. And indeed he was seen from the street by ten stout men who have no reason to lie when they say he was alone.”

Cristina shook her head impatiently. “Irrelevant.”

“He had been drinking,” Zilia said, though she hesitated as she said it.

Tommaso never drank in the mornings. And a thousand stout men might have witnessed his unwary tumble off his balcony; it mattered not. 

For there were secrets in Venice that few people knew.

“I know why Tommaso was killed,” Cristina repeated, “and I will avenge him.”

And thus it was that Cristina became a Shining One; and thus it was that vengeance was sworn.

In later years she wondered if it would have been better if she had faded into the darkness after Tommaso's death, refusing to use her power, as he had made her promise; but by then she was a household name, her justice and her vengeance legendary, and it was too late.

There were no witches in Venice - that anyone acknowledged.

~::~


End file.
